Hi, I’m Andy Fyon!

I’m almost a first time, self-published author of a book. Yes, a real book!

The book is entitled Walking Together: Engagement Lessons from My First Nations Learning Journey. Follow this link to learn more about the book.

I am a retired Director of the Ontario Geological Survey (OGS), an Ontario government geoscience organization. In 1999, I started to visit fly-in First Nations communities in northern Ontario to understand the underlying causes of conflict with the OGS geoscience program. Over the following 15 years, I learned about the importance of jointly creating an engagement process with each First Nations band I worked with. I gained many insights about remote First Nations history, culture, world views, values, community life, and engagement expectations. I made many mistakes!

In 2007, I and colleague Lori Churchill, received an Ontario Government Life Time Amethyst Award recognizing our efforts to improve relations with remote First Nations people. I write about those learnings and experiences in my book Walking Together. Those learnings guided my efforts to modernize the OGS First Nations engagement strategy, practices and related practices. Those learnings also changed my life!

In addition to being a geologist by training, I am also a hobby photographer. I travel across Canada to photograph Canadian landscapes, geological features, and the flora that grow on those landscapes. I look for the geological influences on flora types and distributions. I post stories and photos about those topics features to raise public awareness about the role of geology in helping to create and shape habitats across Canada (Canada (Ontario) Beneath Our Feet). I also composed thousands of photographs of remote First Nations people and their communities across the far north of Ontario, Canada (https://www.andyfyon.ca/).